Food Plants That Grow in The Tropics
An ongoing, ever-evolving list of plants we grow or that we have heard you can grow, in the tropics. Full posts on all of these plants, trees, and herbs are to come. We focus on plants that grow well and easily in tropical conditions, not those that require a lot of extra work, pesticides and…
Can You Grow Pumpkins in the Tropics?
When I first started our tropical garden I wasn’t sure if you could grow pumpkins in the tropics or not. Being from the northern, temperate, hemisphere, I associated pumpkins with autumn harvest, thanksgiving, winter storage and spring plantings. I decided to just plant some seeds and see what happened. Most certainly, yes, you can grow…
October Harvesting and Planting
What’s going on in the tropical food garden in October? October for us, here in the Southern Hemisphere, just 16 degrees south of the equator, is still spring officially, but it feels like full summer to me. .October is a month of abundance in the garden, temperatures have climbed so much that we start to…
September Harvesting and Planting
What’s growing, fruiting, flowering, germinating, and cropping in our tropical food garden in September. That’s the first month of spring where we are. By the end of the first week of September the days were starting to get unpleasantly hot. For the first time I could feel summer coming and dreading it, honestly. There was…
What To Plant in The Tropics in May
May is the last month of autumn for us but already it’s getting a bit chilly at night. If you can call 20 degrees C chilly! Days are still hot and we’re still having a little rain, but the dry season is around the corner. We’re still eating aubergines (eggplant), chillies, grapefruit, mung beans, pumpkins…
November Harvesting and Planting
In November in the tropics the heat is building for us and rain is scarce. By the end of November we’re hiding from the heat indoors and only venture outside very early or around sunset. The plants however, all seem to be loving the warmer temperature and are growing fast so long as they’re watered…
Snake Beans and Green Ants
What’s with snake beans and green ants? As soon as the first flowers appeared on our snake bean plants the green ants were there clustered around the flowers and setting up home in the leaves. Until those flowers appeared ( in July, first bean harvest August for us) there had been no green ants at…